Alice Munro reacts to being described as 'our Chekhov', and discusses why she chooses to write stories that violate the discipline of the short story format and don't obey the rules of progression for novels.
What draws you to short stories as opposed to novels? What do you findthat the shorter form enables you to do that a novel perhaps would not?
I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the shortstory form and don't obey the rules of progression for novels. I don't thinkabout a particular form, I think more about fiction, let's say a chunk offiction. What do I want to do? I want to tell a story, in the old-fashionedway--what happens to somebody--but I want that 'what happens' to be deliveredwith quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness. I want thereader to feel something is astonishing--not the 'what happens' but the wayeverything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.
Where do you get the idea for a story or for a particular character?
Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote,but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story. Suppose youhave--in memory--a young woman stepping off a train in an outfit so elegant herfamily is compelled to take her down a peg (as happened to me once), and itsomehow becomes a wife who's been recovering from a mental breakdown, met by herhusband and his mother and the mother's nurse whom the husband doesn't yet knowhe's in love with. How did that happen? I don't know.
What are your writing habits--Do you use a computer? Do you write everyday? In the morning or at night? How long does it take to complete a story?
I've been using a computer for a year--I'm a late convert to everytechnological offering and still don't own a microwave oven--but I do one or twodrafts long hand before I go to the keyboard. A story might be done in twomonths, beginning to end, and ready to go, but that's rare. More likely six toeight months, many changes, some false directions, much fiddling and somedespair. I write everyday unless it's impossible and start writing as soon as Iget up and have made coffee and try to get two to three hours in before reallife hauls me away.
What advice would you give to young writers?
It's not possible to advise a young writer because every youngwriter is so different. You might say, "Read," but a writer can readtoo much and be paralyzed. Or, "Don't read, don't think, just write,"and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writeryou'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writingsomething you have to write, then getting it better and better just because youwant it to be better, and even when you get old and think "There must besomething else people do" you won't quite be able to quit.
What writers have most influenced you and who do you like to read?
When I was young it was Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, KatherineAnne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee. Then Updike, Cheever, Joyce CarolOates, Peter Taylor, and especially and forever, William Maxwell. Also WilliamTrevor, Edna O'Brien, Richard Ford. These I would say are influences. There aredozens of others I just like to read. My latest discovery is a Dutch writer,Cees Nooteboom. I hate doing lists like this because I'll be banging my headsoon that I left somebody wonderful out. That's why I speak only of those whohave influenced, not of all who have delighted me.
Cynthia Ozick has called you "our Chekhov." How does thatcomparison make you feel?
I have recently re-read much of Chekhov and it's a humblingexperience. I don't even claim Chekhov as an influence because he influenced allof us. Like Shakespeare his writing shed the most perfect light--there's nostriving in it, no personality. Well, of course, wouldn't I love to do that!
Many critics have praised you for being able to create an entire lifein a page. How do you achieve such a feat?
I always have to know my characters in a lot of depth--what clothesthey'd choose, what they were like at school, etc ... And I know what happenedbefore and what will happen after the part of their lives I'm dealing with. Ican't see them just now, packed into the stress of the moment. So I suppose Iwant to give as much of them as I can.
Most of your stories have not strayed very far from home--your nativeOntario. What makes where you live such fertile ground for so many differentstories?
I don't think of myself as being in any way an interpreter of ruralOntario, where I live. I think there's perhaps an advantage living here ofknowing more different sorts of people than you would know in a larger community(where you'd be shut up, mostly, in your own income or educational orprofessional "class"). The physical setting is perhaps"real" to me, in a way no other is. I love the landscape, not as"scenery" but as something intimately known. Also the weather, thevillages and towns, not in their picturesque aspects but in all phases. Humanexperience though doesn't seem to me to differ, except in fairly superficialways, no matter what the customs and surroundings.
Memory plays a key role in many of your stories. What is it about thepower of memory and how it shapes our lives that most intrigues you?
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories--andtelling other people a somewhat different version of our stories. We can hardlymanage our lives without a powerful ongoing narrative. And underneath all theseedited, inspired, self-serving or entertaining stories there is, we suppose,some big bulging awful mysterious entity called THE TRUTH, which our fictionalstories are supposed to be poking at and grabbing pieces of. What could be moreinteresting as a life's occupation? One of the ways we do this, I think, is bytrying to look at what memory does (different tricks at different stages of ourlives) and at the way people's different memories deal with the same (shared)experience. The more disconcerting the differences are, the more the writer inme feels an odd exhilaration.
Do you have a particular story or stories that are especially close toyour heart?
I always like the story I'm trying to write at the moment the best,and the stories I've just published next best, In my new book, I'm very attachedto "Save the Reaper" and "My Mother's Dream." Among theolder ones, I like "Progress of Love" and "Labor Day Dinner"and "Carried Away" a lot. And actually many others.
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